Without a word, I peeled off another hundred and handed it over. My Dad's tab was building up, and I'd make sure he paid it too. He hadn't told me about clouting the wee fella, because he'd have known for sure how I'd react. "Colin's the safest kid in St. Andrews, you know," she continued, with a strange, soft, un-Ellie-like look of pride in her eyes. "He's a little bugger, but he gets away with it, because none of his pals would dream of tackling Jonny."
"Jonny? He's as nice a kid as you'd meet in a day's march. I've never seen him lift a hand to anyone."
"He doesn't have to. There's just something about him behind all that niceness that says "Don't. You wouldn't really want to do that, would you." It's not threatening, but it's just as persuasive. You were the same when you were his age, you know' "Me?"
"Yes, you. Maybe you never realised it, but you were a man of respect at secondary school. Big Man on Campus, that sort of thing, although you never, ever threw your weight around. And of course at primary, you had me to look out for you." A job she'd done very well, I conceded.
"Maybe it's me the lads don't want to cross now," I suggested. "Or big Darius. Are you still seeing him?"
My sister has a boyfriend. Darius Henke is one of the top performers in the Global Wrestling Alliance, a team-mate of my friends Everett Davis, Jerry Gradi and, of course, Liam Matthews.
"Yes, but not in St. Andrews. I don't want to be the talk of the town. When he's free, I park the boys in Anstruther and we go somewhere nice. I've seen quite a bit of him lately, 'cos he's been on the injured list." I'd heard that from Liam. "Anyway, it's neither him nor you. Jonny doesn't stand in anyone's shadow."
I looked across at him as we spoke. If anything, he seemed even taller than the last time I'd seen him, not that many days before; his features were taking on an adult cast and his shoulders seemed to be widening, taking on the bony look that comes with adolescence. "Has he got a girlfriend yet?" I asked.
"There's someone in his year that he's friendly with, a lawyer's daughter. I don't encourage it, though. They're too young."
I grinned at her. "When they stop being too young, there won't be a fucking thing you can do about it. Want me to have a chat with him?"
It was my sister's turn to smile. "There was a time, not that long ago, when I'd have said that would have been like sending him to the Casanova school for chastity. But you seem to have mellowed as a thirty-something. Aye, go on, if you want."
"Bring them down to see us then. Come next weekend, in fact, before Darius gets signed off the crocks' list."
Ellen pursed her lips, looking doubtful. "Oh, I don't know about bringing Darius. We've never done the deed, so to speak, under the same roof as the boys."
"Bloody hell, sister," I laughed. "Do you want me to have a talk with you as well?"
Twelve.
Joe's funeral was a strange affair from Susie's point of view. He was her father and yet she gave a sort of precedence to his sister-in-law Mira… her aunt, although I don't believe that she had any idea that she was. The crematorium chapel was full to overflowing; I knew that the old boy had been popular, but the turnout of colleagues, golf buddies, friends and neighbours took me by surprise. After the service was over and the curtains had closed… I always find that sort of send-off a bit theatrical… I took the precaution of calling the hotel in Bothwell that we had booked for the reception, and telling them to double the order of sandwiches.
True to his word, my Dad came through from life. He and Mary stayed close to Susie and me in the chapel, and we were well into the reception before I was able to isolate him for the word I wanted to drop into his shell-like. He took the rocket I gave him with appropriate contrition, promised to make a fuss of both Colin and Jonny, and even promised to send me a cheque for two hundred quid.
"Consider it a fine for being a grumpy old bastard," I told him. "And it'll be double for a second offence."
I had hoped that Joe's send-off would draw a line under the unpleasantness in my life, and it did… for a day or two, at least. I worked on my movie script but enjoyed my break at the same time, getting a round of golf in at the new Loch Lomond course. It isn't too far from the estate, so I'd become a member. Pricey, but it's a great course.
I was able to play at home too; the previous owner of the place was a golf nut and he'd laid out three holes in one corner, well away from the house. It had been a real selling point as far as I was concerned.
Old Willie, the gardener, grumbled about having to keep the greens cut, but he was a master at it. I'd even inherited a golf cart, an electric buggy which joined the ranks of my favourite toys… and Janet's too.
The pair of us liked nothing more than jumping into it of a morning and cruising the place, and if you have a garden that's the size of a small county it helps to have something to get around in.
The estate's one deficiency, from a Janet point of view, was its lack of outdoor facilities. This was brought home to me by my younger nephew, when Ellie brought them… and Darius… for the promised weekend. "You know, Uncle Oz," said Colin, as he climbed up beside me for a trip in the buggy, 'it's a pity Janet doesn't have a proper playground."
I blinked at him in surprise. "What are you talking about, young man?
This whole place is her playground. She's got a swimming pool, and a wee golf course and everything." As I spoke I looked across the field and saw Jonny, with a better action than mine, hit a near perfect wedge shot to about four feet from the pin; as I watched him I decided I'd give him Joe's Callaways, since he looked good enough to handle them.
The lad seemed to have set out on a futile attempt to teach Darius the basics of the game… it was bound to be futile because when you're six feet ten, golf is bloody nearly impossible.
"But she doesn't have a swing," Colin countered, bringing my attention back to him, 'or a slide, or a climbing frame."
"Which you would also find useful?" I suggested. He gave me a wide-eyed, innocent, "Who? Me?" smile.
He had a point, though. When I mentioned it to Susie she agreed with him, and so we told Jay to hire a contractor and get it done. "I'll build it myself," he volunteered. "Give me a shopping list of the things you want and I'll source them. Installation won't be a problem; it'll just be a matter of setting them in a solid foundation. We've got a cement mixer here and all the other tools I'll need."
That evening Colin and I went net-surfing and found a website called rainbow play which offered a fantastic range of climbing frames, sand pits picnic tables, club-houses, and even tree-houses 'for gardens that don't have trees'. I was as hooked as he was, so I called their enquiry number and ordered the lot, plus a small club-house for delivery to Ellie's garden in St. Andrews. (What's the point of being a rich uncle if you don't act like one?) That was a great weekend, a time of idyllic, undisturbed existence… and then the bombshell hit.
To be exact, it came through the front door of the Gantry Group headquarters building, in a padded envelope addressed to Susie and marked 'personal'. She'd have opened it too, only she didn't go to the office that morning, but straight to a site meeting at a major housing development that we had launched on the outskirts of Glasgow. This project was so big, it was more new town than housing estate, with retail units and a new primary school, towards which the Group was contributing a large chunk of money. It was called New Bearsden, and it was to have the prestige to match the original version, one of Greater Glasgow's swankiest suburbs.
The parcel lay unopened in her in-tray, on her secretary's desk, until, at just after eleven am, before the eyes of an astonished Denise, it gave a soft 'crump' (at least that's how she described it) and burst open of its own accord, sending a sheet of flame high into the air. By the time she stopped screaming and recovered enough composure to grab the nearest fire extinguisher, the package was reduced to ash along with the rest of Susie's morning mail, and the in-tray was a lump of melted plastic on a badly scorched desk.
Gerry Meek was the first of the senior executives on the scene. He
had the presence of mind to do two things: one, lock the office door behind him so that no one else could see what had happened; and two, call me.
Jay and I were in the car, the Lotus Elise that was another of my toys, in less than two minutes and heading for Thornliebank. Gerry had been for calling the police straight away, but I had told him to do nothing until we got there. Jay drove, and managed to break my unofficial world record for the trip. All the way there, one name kept repeating itself in my mind.
It must have showed on my face. "That woman?" he asked, as we pulled up at the office. "The paint-chucker?"
"I can't think of anyone else," I told him.
He gave me a long look. "Boss," he murmured, barely above a whisper, but audible in the car's tiny cockpit, 'are you going to tell me the story?"
So I explained. Since I trusted Jay with my safety and that of toy family, I felt that I could trust him also with the truth about my Dad's predicament. He listened, with neither comment nor question until I was finished. When I was he nodded his head and pursed his lips. "Yes," he exclaimed, "I can see why they'd be frustrated, and why they'd want to get back at you. What do we know about this couple?"
I told him the little that my Dad had told me. "He's a lab technician, is he?" he mused. "Come on, let's see what he might have been up to."
He opened the car door and twisted himself out. I followed suit; I'm a bit bigger than Jay, so it took me a second or so longer.
I led the way inside and made straight for Gerry Meek's office. He looked scared, understandable in the circumstances. "Before we go any further," I began, 'is there anything about this company that I don't know about? Are there any secrets that you and Susie might have kept from me? Have any threats been made against the business? Have we crossed the wrong people?"
"No, Oz, nothing at all. I've been racking my brains for a reason for this but I can't come up with one." He sounded desperate with worry. I wished I could put him out of his misery, but I couldn't.
"Let's see the mess, then."
He took us through to Susie's outer office and unlocked the door.
"Where's Denise?" I asked, as we surveyed the black, soggy morass on the desk.
"I sent her home. She got the fright of her life. The thought of what could have happened if she'd opened that envelope…"
"It was addressed to Susie," I reminded him, 'and marked "personal".
Denise wasn't meant to open it." I had been on auto-pilot until then, keeping everything under control, but in that instant a huge wave of rage surged through me. "The bastard who did this is dead," I said.
"As good as in the fucking ground."
I hadn't been speaking to him, but I think I scared Gerry even more.
"Oz, we'd better get the police."
"Why?" I snapped back at him. "Because of a small accidental office fire that was put out inside a minute?"
"But it wasn't," the finance director wailed. "You know it wasn't."
"I know fuck all of the sort. I'm looking at a pile of wet black ash here, that's all. Denise is a smoker, isn't she?"
"Yes, but not in the off…" He caught my look and stopped in mid-sentence.
"When's Susie due back?"
"This afternoon, I think. She said she'd have lunch with the guys at the site."
"She hasn't called in? You haven't said anything to her?"
Gerry's expression was all over the place as he looked at me; he was seeing someone he'd never met before. "No, she hasn't been in touch."
"Good. That gives you a chance to get that desk out of here and off to the scrapper."
"But what'll I tell Susie?"
"Nothing. That's my job. I'll decide what to tell her, but I do not want this incident going public. Understood?"
I've come to believe that life is a constant stream of irony, of gut-wrenching, jaw-dropping perversity. I'd no sooner given Gerry Meek the heavy message than the sound of sirens invaded the office, growing louder and louder until there was no doubt about their destination. I looked out through the Venetian blinds, and gave a crazy laugh as a police traffic car, all day-glo flashes and blue lights, drew to a halt right outside the window.
"Tell them we don't want any," I said to Jay. No way could I trust Gerry to smooth talk coppers in his condition. The state he was in, give him thirty seconds and he'd have confessed to shooting Bambi's mother.
As Jay went off to talk to Mr. Plod, I walked into Susie's office and sat behind her desk. My agitated fellow director followed me in, but I paid him no attention as I sat in my wife's chair and swivelled it around, looking out at the bright morning and trying to get a handle on what was happening. Eventually I formed my mental ducks into something resembling a row. I swung the chair round and turned back to Gerry.
"Before you packed Denise off home, did she say anything about the package?" I asked.
"It was in a Jiffy bag, apparently."
"How was it addressed?"
He looked at me blankly. "To Susie," he exclaimed.
"No, man," I said, forcing myself to be patient. "Did she say if it was hand-written?"
"It wasn't. I saw it myself. The address was on a stick-on label; it looked as if it came off a printer."
"Was it stamped or franked?" As I asked the question I realised how stupid it was. To send a letter-bomb with franked, and thus traceable, postage would be idiocy of a higher level than I'd ever encountered.
This didn't dawn on Gerry, though. "I can't remember," he replied.
"Do you remember the postmark? Did you see where it was posted?"
He shook his head. "Sorry, Oz."
I waved a hand at him, to indicate that it didn't matter. At that moment, the phone rang on Susie's desk: I picked it up, hoping that it wasn't her. It wasn't; instead I heard Ali Speirs, the finance director's secretary, on the line. "Gerry?" she asked.
"No, it's Oz. What's up?"
"I've got a journalist on the phone, Mr. Blackstone," she blurted out, anxiously. "He says we've had a letter-bomb here. Is that why the police are outside?" I gave her boss a look of approval. He hadn't even told his own secretary what had happened.
"It's bullshit, Ali. Put him through here, but don't tell him it's me.
Let him think he's speaking to Gerry."
"Very good." She didn't ask why; I guessed she knew him pretty well.
"Mr. Meek?" a nasal, ingratiating voice exclaimed a few seconds later. "This is Larry Moore, of the Red Hot News Agency. Have you got any comment to make about the bomb?"
"Well basically," I began, "I'm against all weapons of mass destruction, and I think that Robert Oppenheimer and his team have a hell of a lot to answer for. On the other hand, if the Pandora's Box of nuclear energy had to be opened, I suppose we have to be grateful that our side found the combination before Hitler did."
There was a brief silence, and then Moore was back, less wheedling this time. "Mr. Meek, I was talking about the letter-bomb which was delivered to your office this morning."
"Did you deliver it? If so, can you tell me where it is? Maybe then I can answer your strange question."
"Mr. Meek, are you denying that you had an incendiary device delivered?"
"I'll tell you what an associate of mine is telling the police even as we speak. We had a small outbreak of fire in the office. It was dealt with by our automatic system and by an alert staff member, and there was no need to involve the emergency services." He started to speak again, but I cut him off. "Now I've got one for you. Who fed you this crap?"
"We don't reveal sources, Mr. Meek."
"You couldn't reveal this one even if you did, because you don't fucking know it. You've had an anonymous call, Larry, haven't you, and you've seen a pound or two in it. Tell me, is there any part of the phrase "Taking the piss" that you have trouble understanding?"
"Are you saying this was a hoax call?"
"That's the first sensible question you've asked me."
"But if it was, who'd make it?"
"That's th
e second, and it's one I'm going to be trying to answer for myself. But when I do, I won't be telling you. Have a nice lunch."
I hung up on him, and looked up at the real Gerry Meek. "Nobody else knew about the fire? Only you and Denise Scott?"
"Nobody. I just happened to be passing, and I heard the sound of the sprinklers, then Denise operating the fire extinguisher. When she told me what had happened, I decided it was best kept quiet till you got here." He paused. "But there's something else, Oz. Something I have remembered. The package was neither stamped nor franked."
My eyebrows rose. "Hand-delivered? A courier."
"Could be."
"Once the police have gone," I told him, 'go and ask Danny." The front of house act at Gantry Group head office is quite up-market, as befits a public company. We have night security, but during the day, from eight in the morning till five pm, there's a uniformed commissionaire, whose job it is to receive visitors and take deliveries. He's an ex-constable and his name is Daniel. "You'd better give Ali the official version too, just as I gave it to that guy, and ask her to circulate it."
I looked over my shoulder, out of the window. The two coppers had climbed back into their patrol car, and were leaving, a hell of a lot more quietly than they'd arrived. They had barely cleared the drive before Jay was back, his path crossing with Gerry's in the doorway.
"Sorted?"
He nodded. "They bought it. They'll report it as a waste of police time. I asked them what they knew about the caller. All they knew was unidentified male."
"They weren't the only ones to get a call." I told him about Mr. Larry Moore.
"What'll he do?"
"Flog his non-story for what he can get for it. It'll appear somewhere, I'm sure. I can see the headline, "Letter-bomb scare after fire at Glasgow firm". I just hope that none of the tabloids have the wit to tie this to the paint incident."
"But don't be surprised if they do," Jay warned.
"I won't be. I'm going to have to tell Susie, that's for sure."
"Wise, boss. Now, what about these Neiporte characters? Are you sure about not bringing in the police?"
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